Page 43 of Moonstruck
Asa jerked the wheel, pulling onto the side of the road and throwing it in park before turning to look at Zane, blue eyes bright. “Oh, now I’m definitely not letting it go.”
Zane’s heart slammed against his ribs, both from the terrible driving and Asa’s now laser-like focus on him. “Are you fucking crazy?”
“We both know the answer to that. Now, answer the question.”
“You’re just going to think I’m crazy.”
Asa reached out and pushed an errant curl off Zane’s forehead. “Color me intrigued.”
Go ahead. Tell him. I double dog dare you. Tell him all about me. Hey, he’ll probably let you out of the car right now and you’ll be free.Zane swallowed hard. That thought no longer gave him the thrill he thought it would. Somehow, he no longer really cared about being free of Asa.
“My dead brother talks to me,” Zane blurted. “Or, I talk to him. We…talk.”
Asa blinked at him. “What?”
Shit. “Like, not really. I know my dead brother isn’tactuallytalking to me. But, like, you know that voice in your head that is constantly keeping a running monologue of all your thoughts and feelings like Jiminy Cricket? Mine sounds like my brother.”
“Jiminy Cricket?”
Zane made a noise of exasperation. “Yeah, your conscience. The voice that reminds you of the right thing to do.”
Asa shook his head, a small smile playing at his lips. “Yeah, I don’t have that.”
Of course, he didn’t. Who did? Just Zane. “Well, I do, and mine sounds like my dead brother.”
Asa studied him for a long minute. “Yeah. Yeah, okay. That makes sense.”
With that, he checked his mirror and eased back onto the road as if the matter was resolved. Zane continued to stare at the side of Asa’s face as he drove another two blocks before not being able to stand it anymore. “What do you mean, ‘that makes sense.’ That makes no sense. Hearing the voice of my dead brother makes no sense.”
Asa shrugged. “My brother and I have been…connected…our whole lives. I know what he’s thinking, feeling, doing at any given time. If anything happened to Avi, hearing his voice in my head would be the only thing that kept me from setting the world on fire. Hearing the voice of your dead brother sounds like a coping mechanism. A pretty tame one considering how awful your parents seem.”
Zane didn’t know what to do with that. If he’d told his secret to any other living soul, including Blake, they would have insisted he make an appointment with a therapist immediately. Asa just took it at face value. Zane was living in some alternate universe where up was down and in was out. He’d fallen through the looking glass.
Asa’s phone rang where it sat between them. He pushed a button on the steering wheel. “Dimitri, tell me you’ve got something.”
Dimitri’s voice came through the car’s speaker. “I’ve got something,” he said dutifully.
Zane perked up as Asa said, “What is it?”
“A name.”
“Whose name?” Zane asked.
“The name of a person who may have played the game and lived.”
Asa frowned. “May have?”
“Yeah, it’s…complicated. People who play this game don’t exactly advertise they’re playing the game. It’s kind of an underground thing. But his roommate seems pretty convinced that’s why he dropped out four weeks ago.”
Asa looked at Zane, who shrugged. It was a small lead, but it was a lead.
“Name?” Zane asked.
“Eric Sievers. He was a sophomore at Henley. Dropped out four weeks ago out of nowhere even though he was rocking a 4.0 GPA and was captain of the lacrosse team.”
“Where can we find him?” Asa asked.
Dimitri made a hesitant noise. “Yeah, so that’s the thing. Nobody can find him.”
